Well some of you may have heard some rumbles of thunder this morning across western/central NC. This was some unexpected storms that developed under an upper level low that has very cold air aloft and while the surface was very cool with temps in the mid to upper 30s, about 5000ft aloft there was some instability. Ill explain how this happened. First take a look at the image below, its called a upper air sounding.
(click to enlarge) what this is, is a profile (vertical profile of the atmosphere) and the red line is the temp from the surface to the top, and the green line is the dew point. Now the dark red dotted line shows a parcel of air as the air temp and you see where the temp line (red) and the dark dotted line separate. That shows instability in the atmosphere known as CAPE. and there was just enough of it this morning above the surface to develop some lightning. Heres the lightning image from this morning about 8am or a little after not sure of the time.
see some good amount of lightning in western NC. Next is the NAM analysis from 7am this morning about the time the storms were developing.
First image is the 700mb forcing, or upward motion in the air getting these storms going. The 2ed image is the upper level moisture and the black lines shows instability and you can see right over central NC there was some at that time.
This is the radar image about 10am this morning and you can see the line of storms just right of the 2ed low over western NC. A few radar and sat images from this morning in case you missed it.
Visible sat image of the storms tops this morning. Just wanted to write about this as its rare to have storms while the surface is so cool and stable, but when an upper level low is coming anything can happen.
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